Redwall

Nah, you need two Rally Spectrum users at most: one primary and one backup (recall that skills don't stack with themselves). If you've got Second Seals to spare, Chrom likes Cavalier, while Sully likes Wyvern Rider. Though if you've already got a flier or two, you might want to just have Sully promote to Paladin.

You might get more mileage saving that Second Seal for Chrom (Cavalier, since being sword-locked is awkward past the earlygame, and since Chrom's low Mov as a Lord makes him underwhelming) or Panne; I always like having Rally Spectrum on Avatar.

I really loved the UI of Awakening; in hindsight, it seems like such an obvious idea to make individual enemy ranges a different color from the aggregate enemy range. It saves a lot of time for when you're planning something tricky (e.g. during challenge runs). The sound that goes off when moving your cursor around on the map is also a really nice addition. Awakening's lazy map design and severe gameplay imbalance--much more severe than that of any FE game I've played--were disappointing for me, though. A game that put together the solid map design of, say, Blazing Sword, along with the UI of Awakening would be my ideal FE game.

To me playing by LTC sounds amazingly fun and challenging. You're caring about a number that, due to the exploitable Fire Emblem AI, holds by far the most relevance to the game when determining relative character utility, then seeking any number of strategies to optimize that number. Sounds surprisingly fun. The whole point of the tier list playstyle is to play briskly (not necessarily absolute LTC); the whole point of the tier list is to rank characters according to how well they contribute towards this goal. If you're looking to optimize your turn counts subject to use of low-tier characters, it is a challenge; if you're looking to optimize your turn counts with high-tier characters, it's still a challenge since you'll be expected to yield lower turn counts. Yet, in the absence of the brisk-play directive, the challenge drops a lot; due to a lack of turncount restrictions, people have beaten FE13 Lunatic with low-ranking characters like Swordmaster Gaius and without using higher-ranking ones. A challenge run without turncount restrictions that is limited to low-ranking characters is one that lends itself to exploitation; the brisk-play directive is what prevents you from turtling and turning scrubs into usable characters. Funny you should mention 0% growth runs, seeing as people like dondon and Espinosa still find them easy enough in the absence of turncount restrictions to force themselves to (surprise) low-turn them. You might enjoy playing Fire Emblem as though it were Final Fantasy, but for those who don't, it's a strength, not a weakness. In the absence of the brisk-play directive, stat-boosters, promotional items, and Jagens are dominant enough to make 0%-growth runs straightforward in any difficulty setting below Maniac or Lunatic, which is why people like dondon and Espinosa enforce LTC play on top of them. Only if you're looking at the answers. My daily Sudoku puzzle has exactly one solution, but that doesn't remove the challenge.

Fair enough. And yeah, if you really want to minimize cumulative turncount, postponing Paralogues should be okay.

I've done 16-18 in a single turn without Galeforce, though I wound up needing Rally Movement in 17. Galeforce probably saves some planning time, though, and having higher Lance rank might be nice.

how many turns does the Tactician/Peg Knight/Dark Flier path save compared to the Tactician/GM/Dark Flier route? I'm not aware of any situations before Ch 20 where Galeforce is necessary to cut turns (children Paralogues notwithstanding)

I voted for Wyvern. Avoid-stacking sounds like a plan. You shouldn't be OHKOed by Grima even with unpromoted units; it might be less trouble if you simply Brave-attacked him using someone with whom Chrom has an A- or S-support (perhaps a Myrmidon Lucina might have enough Spd to double?), then use Physic and Dance. Due to Dual Strikes bypassing Pavise, Chrom should be OK at his unpromoted caps since he'll get up to eight Dual Strikes this way if the lead attacker is sufficiently fast. Hit rates against Grima aren't a problem due to Anathema and Hex.

If you use a Master Seal on any character, his or her internal level becomes 21, regardless of however many Seals he or she previously consumed. edit: I think I made a mistake wrt Second Seals, so I'll quote Othin instead:

No one in this thread has said that Limit Break is gamebreaking, only that it's necessary to beat Wave 2 of the ultimate DLC.

The original poster clearly does not dislike DLC on the whole, especially given his other topics on the matter; he dislikes one aspect of it. "if you don't like it, then don't buy it" does not actually contest his claims about Limit Break being a bad design choice.

I am aware; my point was that beating Wave 2 of TSON is more challenging for the player--and that it is better this way, since most of the people interested in TSON probably want it for the challenge--as of now than it would be without Limit Break (precisely because of your extra skill), and with the enemy stats lowered by ten.

The game is broken enough as it is; why allow it to be further broken by allowing a fifth viable skill? Giving you only four options levels the playing field to some extent.

You don't need to waste any turns training Chrom, who is currently strong enough to beat Grima reliably; it's more effective to attack Grima using Brave weapons with the intent of scoring Dual Strikes with the Exalted Falchion than it is to straight-up attack with a Falchion user (due to Pavise blocking normal attacks but not Dual Strikes).

I don't dislike Lucina, but her character is very flat/static; she has exactly one moral moment after Ch 21 which is never further explored in the story or supports (no, A-support with Avatar does not count). Her supports with the male Avatar are completely vanilla. I like everything else about her, though: her Great Lord outfit is really nice, her voice sounds great, and she has a charming smile. Although I always play with battle animations off, I have developed a pregame ritual of sorts that involves me going to view Lucina's battle animation in the battle prep screen. Lucina is the only character for whom I'll actually do this; to me, no other battle animation is worth watching. Maribelle has amusing supports; Basilio has his bad jokes; Flavia has Sol, and I like it when she says "Very nice!" Of the popular characters, I don't really like Walhart.

yes, they will continue to be viewable in the support log available in the Extras section.

The tierlist assumes Paralogues are being visited, so making your playthrough representative of the tierlist playstyle would require Donnel's Paralogue.

Javelin from Paladin/Great Knight/Great Lord can 3HKO if she's been keeping up, allowing you to bypass Counter during the enemy phase as long as you double during the player phase.

Astra isn't very good, yes, but not because of Counter (why are you attacking a Counter Warrior from 1-range to begin with when Myrm Lucina can use Amatsu?).

forgive me if you've tried this, but how about a Dual Strike with (possibly forged) Hammertime Donnel? At S support, each DS should have a 60% or so chance of landing, giving you an 84% chance of a KO when combined with Arcthunder x2. Though given the fact that you've been pairing Pegs with Linde, you'll probably have to get a bit creative with Dance/Rescue in the absence of the extra Mov afforded by the Pegs.

Um, duh? The tierlist playstyle needs to be well-defined, yes; the tiering contributors do realize that the tierlist playstyle is not mainstream, and that anyone who doesn't want to adopt the guidelines can play the game another way. Certainly, structuring tiers according to other criteria is possible, but also irrelevant for people who are interested in seriously challenging themselves in their playthroughs. To use the "most EXP gained" example: such a run sounds mind-numbingly boring, and I'm sure you'd agree that we play SRPGs with the intent of actually thinking, as opposed to walking our units around the map haphazardly looking for kills. But no, it's a strength. Two characters were about to be switched on the list to precisely reflect their contributions to an efficient playthrough, with a definition of efficiency clearly stated. Whether Mia allows for more kills / less brainpower used / lifestyle improvements / whatever is not a question the SF tierlist seeks to answer. No one is claiming the tierlist playstyle to be representative of Fire Emblem players in general. It is intended to promote a playstyle that rewards careful planning and well-executed tactics. When people refer to the playstyle as "the only way", they mean that it's the only way for experienced players to challenge themselves. Due to the rather incompetent Fire Emblem AI, playing without severe restrictions is rather easy even on the highest difficulty settings (and generally not worthwhile to experienced players) in the absence of the LTC directive.

Tiki's Paralogue is just really poorly designed, from the bland layout to the braindead AI. The least un-fun way to beat it is by skipping through it with Rescue. Although it's nice to look at, C16 is kind of annoying to play through if you're not Rescue-skipping; looking only at the top screen can make it confusing to distinguish between traversable (for ground units) and untraversable terrain, forcing to to flip back and forth between the two screens. C18 has a similar problem (for me) in that the lava motif makes it difficult to see highlighted enemy attack range. C23 favors superunits more than it favors carefully thought-out positioning--actually, I guess many levels in the game are like this, but C23 is the worst offender by far. I actually like C21; if you're deploying a full team, it forces you to actively use everybody to take out important threats.

...so just remove Luna, Ignis, and Vengeance. Lifetaker heals a maximum of 40 HP in a player phase; Sol has no restrictions. Because this is a game where enemy phase is so important, Sol can and will heal well over 40 HP per enemy phase in enemy-dense chapters like Chs 23 and 24. It is highly reliable when your Sol-tank doubles everything; a unit with 40 Skl and sufficient Spd has a 64% of activating Sol on any particular enemy, which is high enough to guarantee your survival a vast majority of the time when enemies are numerous and generally don't do enough to 2HKO. I consider Sol to be cheat-code-esque; the only other non-DLC skills which compare are Veteran and Rally Spectrum. Galeforce is good, but it's not an ability that lets you get away with mashing Start to skip enemy phases, whereas Sol is.

Snowy, the outcomes of your tierlist aren't even testable; f(x) = (utility + combat + saved turns)/3 doesn't output anything that's independently measurable. Contrast that with how tierlist disputes are currently handled; you believe the decision of Mia vs. Zihark over a single turn to be a "weakness" of the tiering criteria, whereas everyone else knows it to be a strength since it means that character rankings can actually be tested and falsified.

If you're looking to optimize (whether in a strong sense or in a more loose sense) both turncounts and reliability, Lissa works better as a Pair Up partner than as a legit healer, at least in the Prologue and Ch 1.